Patent troll takes last shot at owning “interactive web,” but falls short

A Texas Judge refused to revive the notorious Eolas patent.

A patent-trolling firm called Eolas, working together with the University of California, took a notorious patent to trial in East Texas earlier this year, trying to win close to $1 billion from Internet companies including Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and others. The inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, actually flew down to East Texas to testify for the defense, which ultimately beat Eolas.

Now Eolas has taken a final, post-trial longshot, but missed its target again.

Judge Leonard Davis, who oversaw the case, issued an order (PDF) today that puts a final stop on attempts by Eolas and its owner, Michael Doyle, to claim it owns technology that's critical to running any "interactive" site on the web. That means Eolas can't use its 5,838,906 patent, or a successor patent, No. 7,599,985, to sue anyone, unless it manages to overturn this verdict on appeal.

In its motion, Eolas presented several arguments that the jury verdict was unreasonable and not based on enough evidence—for instance, Eolas lawyers argued that a defense expert had improperly used different codebases of a pioneering web browser called Viola. Judge Davis rejected that, finding that "a reasonable juror could infer that, to the extent that Phillips testified generally about Viola, the testimony applied to all three codebases in evidence."

Eolas lawyers also argued that the jury should have been allowed to see the licensing agreements they had scored with previous defendants. Davis tossed that aside as well, pointing out that Eolas had already asked for—and won—a ruling stopping the other side from referring to the company's "business success or failure." Since defense lawyers weren't allowed to point out to the jury that Eolas was a company with no business beyond making patent demands, Eolas couldn't complain that its licensing agreements were kept out of the argument.

Finally, Eolas argued that the jury had been swayed by "passion and prejudice" rather than the facts, and it at least deserved a new trial. Davis scarcely even responded to that allegation, noting only that lawyers for both sides had behaved professionally throughout the case and that "there is no indication the jury based its verdict on anything other than the evidence presented at trial."

Eolas and Doyle sued Microsoft in 1999, a long-lasting litigation that went through twists and turns before settling in 2007. Two years later, Eolas went full-bore "patent troll," suing more than 20 defendant companies, including Apple, Playboy, Perot Systems, Blockbuster, Citigroup, eBay, and others. Many of those companies settled, and several more settled during a lightning-fast, four-day trial in Texas. Only Google, Yahoo, Amazon, and J.C. Penney stuck it through to the final verdict.

Michael Doyle and two co-inventors had University of California lawyers file for the patent while running a computer science program at UC San Francisco back in 1993. He later spun it off into Eolas, a company that made him wealthy through its patent attack on Microsoft.

The University of California got a 25% share of Eolas' settlement with Microsoft—more than $30 million. UC presumably made a similar amount from settlements with these defendants, and could have made hundreds of millions had Eolas been successful at trial.

Is there not some grounds upon which someone can sue the patent troll to keep the patent troll busy for awhile? A few meaningless niggling and trifling lawsuits for absurd amounts of money should do the trick. No? Defamation of character, to start with. And proceed on, from there.

Anyone else want to fund the first Kickstarter project that allows us to punch people through the Internet via a hotkey?

Some people don't believe Kickstarter will solve that one, so they've switched to other means...

(The Lord was unavailable for comment. Unavailable for anything, actually.)

I was an engineer at cisco in the early years. We were customizing routers to do whatever our customers needed... if only someone would have asked for this functionality... we might have been able to do it!

There sure would be a lot less junk mail and popup ads had we implemented the "punch in the face" ICMP command.

I was an engineer at cisco in the early years. We were customizing routers to do whatever our customers needed... if only someone would have asked for this functionality... we might have been able to do it!

There sure would be a lot less junk mail and popup ads had we implemented the "punch in the face" ICMP command.

And "punch in the face" would have taken the place of popups in the early web years...

"Ha, I turned on my 'punch in the face' blocker so you can't touch me!"

It's a good thing no one has founded KickStomper to crowd-fund well-deserved beatings. I already spend enough funding worthy gaming projects.

Of course violence is bad so no one should engage in it

Funny, violence seems to be the only universal language and motivator to actually make people change at a genuine level.

Consider this situation: the people hate the government. Solution: people keep trying bargaining, politics, new leaders and so forth. Government keeps getting worse. Finally, violent uprising causes instant and massive change to order.

If anything, our current, "violence is inherently an unacceptable and evil way" thought is actually a way of the current systems and methods insulating themselves from being usurped. Violence is a tool like any other, and frankly it is vastly quicker and more effective than any other method historically. Ironically, it often costs fewer lives in the long term as well.

You do understand that in the US at least, the various police maintain control and authority exclusively through the threat of violence and not because of public service or earned respect for the past 40-50 years or so, right?

Wait...the Eastern District of Texas actually *rejected* a patent? Is this the first time this has ever happened in history? I think we're lucky that that patent on "swinging side-to-side on a swing" was granted in Australia and not the US, otherwise I'm sure millions of schoolchildren would be flown into Texas to testify.

Wait...the Eastern District of Texas actually *rejected* a patent? Is this the first time this has ever happened in history? I think we're lucky that that patent on "swinging side-to-side on a swing" was granted in Australia and not the US, otherwise I'm sure millions of schoolchildren would be flown into Texas to testify.

yeah I'm surprised as well. If your patent gets thrown in East Tex of all places, you can be sure you had nothing in the first place.

East Texas, patent troll capital of the world. Followed closely by Germany.

If only the kings of old had the modern weapons of today, you could seriously imagine them, there on the battlefield on a misty foggy plain in November. A breath of air escapes their mouth in the icy temperatures, "Send in the Lawyers", striking fear into his opponent.

Actually, come to think of it, no King of old would ever use such a weapon. They believed in honour.

The interesting part to me is how much of the same crowd cheering this verdict was busy cheering Eolas on back when MS was their target. I said back then that this could bite them in the ass, but htey swore that Eolas only wanted to go after MS. Lucky this verdict went their direction this time, eh?

There are many more patents far more absurd being used in litigation. If those are OK, I don't see why this isn't. After all, applying "web" or "smartphone" to a previously used process/invention seemingly is good enough for the patent office and court systems.

Wait...the Eastern District of Texas actually *rejected* a patent? Is this the first time this has ever happened in history? I think we're lucky that that patent on "swinging side-to-side on a swing" was granted in Australia and not the US, otherwise I'm sure millions of schoolchildren would be flown into Texas to testify.

Billy-Joe-Bob & Mary-Sue-Ellen realized they couldn't get their iTunes, fart apps or see the Facebook pics of "that skanky whore Sally-Jo's slutty new tatoos (and who does she think she is flirting with Littl' Bubba anyhows)"... without their Intertubes,... Plus they'd have nothing to distract them from their sadness of when their twelve dogs died when the porch collapsed. Even rednecks need their iPhones.

The interesting part to me is how much of the same crowd cheering this verdict was busy cheering Eolas on back when MS was their target. I said back then that this could bite them in the ass, but htey swore that Eolas only wanted to go after MS. Lucky this verdict went their direction this time, eh?

Nah. Anybody who actually stopped to think about it for a couple if seconds, realised that the Eolas troll was bad news, and that Microsoft (a.k.a. "the Evil Empire") was actually (God help us) in the right (for once) .

In fact alcohol sales experienced a small but distinct boost, as millions of techies across the tech-scape felt the overwhelming need to ease the pain incurred by uttering such a grim admission, and to wash away the foul taste of such a dismal truth.

(excuse me -- I need to see if I have any beer left in the fridge from last weekend)

The interesting part to me is how much of the same crowd cheering this verdict was busy cheering Eolas on back when MS was their target. I said back then that this could bite them in the ass, but htey swore that Eolas only wanted to go after MS. Lucky this verdict went their direction this time, eh?

Nah. Anybody who actually stopped to think about it for a couple if seconds, realised that the Eolas troll was bad news, and that Microsoft (a.k.a. "the Evil Empire") was actually (God help us) in the right (for once) .

In fact alcohol sales experienced a small but distinct boost, as millions of techies across the tech-scape felt the overwhelming need to ease the pain incurred by uttering such a grim admission, and to wash away the foul taste of such a dismal truth.

(excuse me -- I need to see if I have any beer left in the fridge from last weekend)

Check the postings in the threads on this topic from back when the prior case was announced. While yes, some people recognized the issue, many did not. You'll note that I've always distinguished between actual trolling and protection of useful IP, but back then few understood the difference(and most still don't seem to).

The interesting part to me is how much of the same crowd cheering this verdict was busy cheering Eolas on back when MS was their target. I said back then that this could bite them in the ass, but htey swore that Eolas only wanted to go after MS. Lucky this verdict went their direction this time, eh?

Do you have any specific examples? I suspect you are misrepresenting these posts.

The interesting part to me is how much of the same crowd cheering this verdict was busy cheering Eolas on back when MS was their target. I said back then that this could bite them in the ass, but htey swore that Eolas only wanted to go after MS. Lucky this verdict went their direction this time, eh?

Do you have any specific examples? I suspect you are misrepresenting these posts.

To be fair, I just wandered through the old postings and found few defending Eolas. I must be remembering CNet forums from the time.

So if it's possible to make 30M or 120M or whatever off a patent from 1 settlement, then surely, patent holders, no matter how dubious the patent, are pretty much obliged to sue everybody and everyone. Otherwise, what's the system for?

Seems like a crazy system to me (and most Ars posters). Can we have an article on "How To Unwind Software Patents"? Do you stop issuing them and the let the problem decay over 20 (whatever) years? Taper royalities off? Hard-deadline? Is there a black and white definition of patents that should (?) be revoked.